Doctor Who: Fear Her

After the pre-credits scene I accurately predicted the main points of this week's story, right down to the plot-mistakes that would be made, simply because this show has become so generic.

England. People disappear. No-one suspects aliens despite all the invasions of recent times. The authorities are invisible. Broken family. Doctor/Rose discovers the captives’ pleading disembodied faces in a room. Hidden villain obeying alien. Rose/Doctor captured for second half, so the other has to manage on their own. Alien wants to capture the whole Earth. Race against time, as the thickie alien never realises that it could have captured the entire Earth before the episode had even begun. Because the alien only knows what its own plan is once the TV audience has been told it. Everyone returns to normal. The memories / experience / ramifications of so many people being captured are never even acknowledged. The Idiot's Lantern anyone?




Even using a live TV broadcast of a procession down a street as a timeframe device is repeated here again.




On the plus side, the Doctor and Rose actually display some sort of ongoing working relationship here - their dialogue and banter sparkles the way I think it's always been meant to. Then just before the end, they suddenly seize-up again and clunkily change the subject to their relationship, and by implication what might happen to it in next week’s episode. That, unfortunately, is called script-editing.


Overall, this could have been great had it not been preempted by so many similar episodes before it. In retreading so much, it contained little to call its own. Even the title Fear Her doesn't really narrow down which episode we're talking about. Something old-fashioned like The Artist Of Death would have done it.

How sad that the most flexible format in TV series history, a show that has always been able to be about anyone, anything, anywhere at anytime, has been "revived" in such a formulaic cage.


7 out of 10. A nice little tale, rather bruised by the episodes surrounding it.

(screencaps from http://doctorwho.time-and-space.co.uk/coppermine/thumbnails.php?album=12&page=1)